Melee horde only needs 1 person working on them, and they pose no threat, as ranged is much greater of a threat with many people needing to work on them simultaneously. They really need to rethink how inconsequential melee horde is compared to ranged trash group.
I don’t respect your opinion at all if you really think ranged trash is as dangerous as melee trash to a run, even with melee having horde events.
But that also poses a problem in terms of team composition, which will always be random without premades.
Only the Veteran is really kitted out to quickly, safely and effectively deal with gunners. A lot of people, myself included, have tried do to that with the Zealot (Revolver, braced autoguns) or Psyker, but at best we became budget-veteran while sacrificing a lot of effectiveness in other domains. The best a Zealot can do against gunners is abuse the insane mobility of the Combat Knife, along with the 75% Dmg reduction on crits to not die if you mess up a dodge.
On the other hand, every class can be very effective against hordes without sacrificing a lot (maybe some armor penetration problems, that can be compensated with the other weapon or active ability). The Veteran, of course, has the Power Sword, along with the blessings Power Cycler and Supercharge with makes it literally the best melee weapon in any -Tide game ever made.
If you go in QP and you’ve got zero Veterans, well, prepare to struggle a little.
This hasn’t been my experience, but if it’s a widespread problem they might look at a rebalance of some kind.
There’s also the matter of ammo efficiency and Suppression by ranged enemies : Ogryns and Zealots can’t compete with the Vet there, and at some point will be forced to engage more often in melee against hordes of gunners.
It’s a little counterproductive to try and be a better Veteran than the Veteran himself.
It’s one of the reasons why the Flamer is so popular amongst Zealots ; why try and do the Veteran’s job badly, when you could instead be so good at horde-clear that he doesn’t even need to worry about hordes or ambushes ?
Zealot is still very effective with an MGXII, they even get to eliminate the reverse damage drop off if they take the talent that gives them more damage the closer they are to an enemy. Their grenades are also stellar at locking down a wide area of enemies. I know a lot of people save them for melee or revives, but they’re also great crowd control on groups of shooters. You can easily clear them out before they shake off the stun.
I could go on, but from my experience, every class has the gear and talents that can help them clear out a large number of ranged targets. Veteran just has the buffed up most direct method of doing so.
Often (but not always) there is an alternative route to get to the enemy (like a different corridor), that allows you to stay in cover for most of the time. You can also use your ogryn charge to get close to them (also not always an option).
As far as i can tell, if you engage one of the shooters in melee combat, his buddies are also more likely to switch to melee. If you use the “20% toughness when heavy hits 1 target” or have the blessing that gives you “x% toughness on chained hit”, these situations should be manageable without a problem. The few ranged units that still shoot at you at that point, will struggle to chew through your constantly refilling toughness.
The Grenadier Gauntlet is very accurate and can 1 shot all the shooters (even the elites, if stats are high enough) on direct hit.
I usually kill a few of the ranged units from range, then spam my GG at the remaining ones to stun as many of them as possible, then charge in with my ult and start smacking them.
You can also try to assist your teammates by shooting beside cover, so that the enemies come flying out and are no longer hidden from your allies.
Grenadier Gauntlet works up to around 37m. If you have never tried it, i suggest you do (Hold rightclick to aim, then leftclick to fire. Otherwise, leftclick will result in you slapping the enemy with your grenadelauncher.). It can also oneshot a lot of the specials (with decent damage and penetration roll) which is nice.
I have to disagree, I think as soon as you start balancing ranged combat the game will lose it’s charm. Ranged enemies are there to push you to make a choice, usually the obvious take cover, regroup and assess the situation probably just deal with it ranged safely. Or even force shooters to come to you (that is almost always an option aslong as the whole team retreats, except maybe reapers they take awhile). You can also on characters like ogryn and zealot, if you don’t have a good ranged pick or simply out of ammo dashing in to shooter groups put’s them into melee which can give your team the upper hand, giving them the chance to possibly focus on those high value targets like shotgunners etc. I think the game always provides options to deal with shooters regardless of the map or team synergy, often pub games and team synergy is what I rather find to be the problem in my games.
I think if pubs were coordinated enough to pull ranged units around corners it would be pretty tame. But I am not even sure how common knowledge it is that if you give them enough time they leave their advantaged positions (stupidly).
Ranged enemies have some issues and so do melee. I think one of the big things is how they interact with toughness. I actually have a post talking about issues with toughness and how it could be rebalanced to improve the game/play.
Shameless post linking time:
Fatshark is already walking into nerfing ranged units too much. Their ability to notice players have been unnecessarily lowered. Their damage output and overall dps has been lowered also.
It’ll be nice if ranged enemies switching to melee was more reliable, they still tend to run more often than not. Perhaps it’s a targeting issue where they try to run if someone that isn’t that target gets in close?
It’ll be nice if you do more damage to fleeing enemies that isn’t just the perk Raking Fire.
Agreed. I want a harder damnation not an easier one. Too many nerfs. Though lately the elites and specials spawns seem more aggressive and i dig it.